Gang Of Four

The authors of the DesignPatternsBook came to be known as the "Gang of Four." The name of the book ("Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software") is too long for e-mail, so "book by the gang of four" became a shorthand name for it. After all, it isn't the ONLY book on patterns. That got shortened to "GOF book", which is pretty cryptic the first time you hear it.

"Gang of Four" was originally a reference to certain people of note in Maoist China. Both the band and the authors of the DesignPatternsBook are named after them. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/gang.htm

Sadly, JohnVlissides passed away on November 24 2005 after a long illness. His home page JohnVlissides has many many great stories about his life from his friends and colleagues.

[GOF:PageNo] is an increasingly common acronym for the patterns found in this book. i.e

 [GOF:233] - Command Pattern.
 [GOF:163] - Composite Pattern.

Cool ! I would suggest using locale-enabled notation to provide this kind of information to non-English readers:

 [GOF{fr}:271] - Pattern Commande.
 [GOF{fr}:189] - Pattern Composite.

-- GuillaumeBertrand?

>C'est nickel!< Only ... and, not having seen the book, I hesitate here ... are pages not confounding? Could not pattern number serve better in the form [GOF{gr}:162- Patter Whatever]? -- BenTremblay

Indeed, this notorious cabal will soon be brought to justice at OOPSLA '99 during a panel entitled the ShowTrialOfTheGangOfFour for crimes against computer science.

They can also be found at http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/patterns/DPBook/GOF.html

For more information, see http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/pattern/books/#Gamma (BrokenLink) and http://www.awl.com/cseng/titles/0-201-63361-2

-- BobbyWoolf

I have begun documenting procedural/relational versions of the GOF patterns. You can view the current draft at: http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/prpats.htm

Comments welcome.

"Think of the GOF as helping losers lose less." -- Richard P. Gabriel

A comment on how many of the patterns the "pattern community" describes are merely a way around language constraints in CeePlusPlus et al. (See LanguageSmell.)

Design Pattern book just celebrated its 10th Anniversary at OOPSLA2004 in Vancouver! Congrats!

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (January 15, 1995) A bit early, no? It's still a week away.

Is there ever going to be a 2nd edition?

For information on the possibility of a second edition, see this interview with John Vlissides here: http://www.devx.com/DevX/Article/26755 -- RobSanheim

CategoryPattern